


Crowley's (Unjust) Comeuppance

by McVetty



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Hell, Torture, Whump, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McVetty/pseuds/McVetty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day they came for him was much like the day they didn't. After seven-hundred years, he ran out of cheeky things to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crowley's (Unjust) Comeuppance

**Author's Note:**

> Very first ever GO fic. Finished the book and this image would not leave my mind. I hope I've done it justice. I attempted to proofread it a few dozen times, but my iPod can be a fickle mistress. I hope you enjoy!

After seven-hundred years, give or take, Crowley had run out of cheeky things to say.

He liked to imagine it was because every time he did, they ripped his tongue out in new and interesting ways, and he liked his tongue perfectly where it was, thank you very much.

The truth of the entire matter was that Crowley had given up the fight. One could only suffer the tortures of Hell for so long before succumbing. It was a miracle that he made it so long at all. Then again, demons were rather more hardy than the usual humans on the torture racks. Crowley had thus far outlived (if you could call it living) seventy-three-thousand-nine-hundred-and-thirty-four (that's 73,934 in case you are numerically inclined) human souls. The torture rack had been designed by Hastur, which through no incidental matter happened to incorporate the more interesting things he learned from the middle ground of Earth. 

By interesting, it could be inferred that they were sick and twisted in a way only humans could imagine, and Crowley would have much preferred the older ways of Hell. Alas, those days were far over and in the long forgotten past, hiding somewhere with memories of a scruffy hell-hound and his pre-teen master and their three friends and a little place called Lower Tadfield.

Sometimes, Crowley got nostalgic. Usually, that only happened when Hastur was too busy to administer tortures himself and summarily assigned the task to his underlings, who were slightly more versed in the old ways, though certainly incorporated some of Hastur's new ways as well.

Crowley's least favorite was waterboarding. Except, in Hell, it couldn't quite be called Waterboarding. What it could be called was bloody painful. Crowley knew because Hastur liked that one in particular, along with a few others that were so impossibly brutal it made Crowley squeamish just to think about it. He supposed it could be worse. It had, in fact, been worse. The first three-hundred years after they nabbed him, they had left him alone. Dark, hot, silent, and completely alone. He had held out hope for the first few years that someone would remember he was there, that they would come by and apologize for leaving him to wait for so long. After a while, he screamed and cried and begged for someone, he even begged for Hastur, but only silence echoed back. He could have given up then, he could have hung his head, and right when he was about to, when he felt the walls of his sanity cracking, there had been a voice. That's when the pain began.

But he soldiered on, through seven-hundred years of Hell, for a purpose that grew dimmer each day. His wings turned black as soot, his feathers began to split and fray. Sometimes, and rather unexpectedly, they caught fire. Hastur blamed Aziraphale for tainting Crowley's inherent evil, saying it was Hell attempting to clean the 'good' out of him. Crowley told him he was mad as a hatter, and argued against any shred of goodness being in him from the start. He was, after all, a demon. How could he have any good inside him?

It might have been true, and he might have convinced himself he was truly and really evil, but everyone around him knew better. They could see the touch glowing in him, a tiny speck of light that even the most hardened of demons shied from when they weren't flogging it or attempting to rip it out at the roots. It was all incredibly inconvenient for Crowley.

Sometimes he thought about the day they came for him, but it often became fuzzier the more effort he put into it, and he often gave up the entire battle. It was exhausting, anyway, imagining things weren't as bad as they really were. And to think he had found it exhausting to imagine his Bentley with wheels!

On the rare occasion he did recall that day, a thin smile (if it could be called that) would slip onto his lips for a fleeting moment. It was usually that moment when Hastur would 'up his game,' so to speak, and Crowley would be brought out of his delusional daydream rather roughly, with a lot of blood, all of it his own. Luckily for the fallen demon (which was an incredibly strange concept that he often asked about, before he gave up completely because they seemed to like ripping his tongue out instead of answering him), today was a rare instance in which Hastur was busy. Today was a rare occasion that Crowley let himself slip into what could be called pleasant memories, for a demon.

The day they came for him wasn't much different from the day they didn't come for him. In fact, the only difference was Aziraphale's choice of clothing, which, when Crowley woke up, was something close to nothing. Aziraphale had been standing at the foot of Crowley's bed in that 'I can't believe you slept all night and left me alone in your flat' kind of way. If there was one thing Crowley could not convince the angel, it was that sleeping was good for you, no matter how immortal you were. They had big plans that day, including a hefty compromise on a movie about an anti-hero saving the world (again) because it had the right balance of good and bad to satisfy both parties. Aziraphale stubbornly refused to see the movie Crowley wanted, and likewise the demon refused to watch the angel's choice. Had they come to any sort of conclusion, Crowley felt, he might not be here now.

They came for him during breakfast, two weeks after the Apocolypse that Wasn't.

It was rather rude of them, entering the flat without knocking, and rather more rude of them to interrupt a peaceful breakfast. Though it was somewhat less peaceful after Hastur so rudely slammed Crowley's head into the plate of eggs Aziraphale had prepared. That was about the moment that Crowley's memory became fuzzy, but he did remember Aziraphale being fully dressed in the blink of an eye (it seemed like, finally, the angel had decided to wish himself clothing, though the situation rather called for it). Crowley also remembered the blaring voice of someone who was entirely too pissed off.

YOU WILL ANSWER FOR YOUR TREASON.

Crowley rather thought he'd done his answering by now.

One of the final bits he remembered, and one of the bits that stuck in his mind and ate away at the corners of his sanity, was the bright light that filled the room, and Aziraphale's dejected, "Oh" as it faded away and that was it, that was all Crowley could get.

He flinched back to reality rather unpleasantly, blinking down at the blade sticking out between his ribs. He hmmphed, heaving a heavy sigh as if he'd seen it all before (and he had, exactly seven-million-three-hundred-and-four times in that exact spot), but the sweat that trickled down his brow betrayed his outwardly collected self. His wonderfully pleasant torturer had already been at his job for most of the day, which was seemingly endless in Hell. Probably it was. All told, Crowley was missing three fingers, eight teeth (he had particularly complained about the teeth, to which his torturer had taken a hot iron to his tongue and you really don't want to know what happened then), an ear (he had wanted to make a comment about Vincent van Gogh, who he had personally inspired, but kept it to himself), and had already burst into flames three times, only to be put out by means of beating a blood-soaked blanket over his wings. Crowley's days went from worse to absolutely intolerable. Thick blood dribbled from the wound as his torturer pulled the blade out, slowly, twisting it round. Crowley hissed, grit his teeth together, and forced himself to keep silent. It was a particularly tall order, even for himself.

It was, in fact, such a tall order that he began to hallucinate.

In the dark, empty void above his head, there was a chilling sound tickling in malicious benevolence right through his entire being and sliding roots into that little bit of good. (Such a little bit that, if one were to measure it, one would find that even the smallest quark would be mammothly larger than the bit of good Aziraphale had planted in Crowley.) The demon was suddenly overcome with an inexplicaby strong desire to sneeze. Unfortunately, the torturer in charge for the day heard the noise as well and began shrieking and flailing, knocking over an entire bucket of diluted (and slowly tarnishing) holy-water on himself and splashing it over Crowley. 

The holy-water burned through his skin, and, because he had the most audacious privilege of being in Hell already, he didn't die and he didn't explode, he writhed in pain and pinched his eyes shut tight. This was probably a very good thing, because the very next moment, a blinding flash of light spread through the endless void of the torture racks, chasing away shadows lingering on the hundreds of thousands of poor souls hanging limp against their chains. The torturer, by this point nearly melted, burst into flames and was consumed. Had Crowley's eyes been open, he might have thought, 'No real waste there.' Really, it wasn't. The light shifted and turned, and when Crowley did open his eyes, the light pivoted and blinded him after seven-hundred years of darkness. He had a mind to tell them to turn it off, thank you, his eyes were adjusted to the dark now, but a demon had his tongue and he was getting far too exhausted for the whole ordeal.

As if to test his endurance, his wings burst into flickering flames for the fourth time that day.

As far as hallucinations went, this one took the cake and ate it too. It took all the other cakes and tossed them on the road for a lorry to drive over, just because it could.

Then, as suddenly as he was bathed in light, it vanished, and a touch he hadn't felt in seven-hundred years graced his cheek. 'Graced' was probably the best and only term for what the touch did, because a tremor of something good and nice (though nice in the way that a summer day is nice, not nice in the way that Agnes' prophecies [of which she wrote this in the further edition] were nice) rose through Crowley's chest and he felt much of the pain ebbing away like the tide at a distant shore. He opened his golden eyes, slitted pupils expanding in the dark.

"Uh," he uttered, and found that his tongue was back in his mouth where it belonged (thank you very much).

Aziraphale stroked Crowley's cheek softly, as if comforting a lover. And really, after a few centuries, they ought to be. "There is only so much I can do," he said softly, his voice smooth as velvet and gentle as a morning breeze. "You'll have to do the rest"

"What-" Crowley tried to say, but he suddenly fell limp and everything in his little world went dark.

Aziraphale's quick fingers (all those years of magic tricks and sleight of hand were finally paying off) undid the chains that bound Crowley to the rack. What Aziraphale hadn't counted on was the way Crowley's limp body would very nearly fling itself onto him, what with the force of gravity being greater down in Hell and all. After nearly falling over, the angel unfurled his wings with a powerful flap. The only way out was up, and he intended to get out before anyone had been completely informed of what exactly was happening. Then, he couldn't possibly hope that no one had seen him entering Hell, because there were eyes everywhere, and Aziraphale never had much luck anyway.

The angel gripped Crowley around the waist, pulling him up, up, up, higher than the black void seemed to allow. Aziraphale's wings glowed in the darkness, a beacon of warmth, and the tortured souls below called out for salvation. "Save us," they cried pitifully, their voices stabbing into Aziraphale's ears. It took a great deal of control to maintain his course, holding tightly to Crowley's unconscious body. He wanted to stop and explain to the lost souls that he could only take one, he could only lift the one soul (though he did question if Crowley had something like a soul at all). In the end, Aziraphale turned a deaf ear to the pleading masses, his great white wings powering forever up. 

A lifetime passed, and then another, before any sort of progress seemed to be made. The levels of Hell passed by all around them, fire and brimstone and fear and loathing and blood. Aziraphale's hands were covered in Crowley's blood, slick down the front of his suit, because even going into Hell, Aziraphale liked to look his best.

Red light filtered down from above, and Aziraphale's wings began to ache with the weight of his unconscious passenger. He made a very strict mental note to never do this again, and to tell Crowley exactly what he thought of it, whenever they made it back to the surface. 

His considerably optimistic thoughts were dashed when the red light cut out and horrific screaming began echoing off every invisible wall of Hell. Suddenly his cargo became heavier, and when he looked down, he could see why. Hands grasped out of the darkness, dragging nails and claws and talons down Crowley's tattering clothes. One imp pulled itself hand over hand up Crowley's pant leg to sink its teeth into Aziraphale's fingers and the angel hissed, nearly dropping Crowley to the seething darkness. Aziraphale's wings beat harder as he lost grip with one arm to shook off the imp. Crowley began to slip, and for a heartbeat, Aziraphale forgot that he didn't have to breathe, being an angel, because his breath hitched so suddenly in his chest he actually began breathing. With the imp flying into the darkness, Aziraphale got hold of Crowley and struggled to rise above the damned's grasping fingers. They came from everywhere, pawing at Crowley, plucking his feathers, ripping his clothes.

For the first time, spontaneous wing combustion was a genuinely useful thing.

Crowley's wings went up in flames, sizzling from the tips to the bases, leaving every feather burnt and black, and the grasping hands shrunk away from the fire. As quickly as it began, the fire was out, leaving Crowley's wings smoldering, the smoke drifting into Aziraphale's nose and eyes. He coughed, choking against the smell, and promptly stopped when he saw something he'd never seen before.

As each charred feather fell away from Crowley, a downy white feather replaced it, rolling rapidly down the demon's wings, until they glowed dimly, not enough to attract attention, but enough to make one turn their head and question what exactly it was they were looking at. Crowley stirred in Aziraphale's arms, life breathing back into his limp body. It took him a moment to remember where he was, his slitted eyes shifting from Aziraphale's face to the arms around his waist.

Before either of them could speak, they were under a bright blue sky, standing in an endless sea of wheat grass. Aziraphale's arms were still around Crowley's waist, their faces (un)comfortably close in a way they hadn't been for seven-hundred years. A silence filled the air around them, strangely deafening after the events of Hell below.

Crowley tried out his wings.

He couldn't decide what, if anything, was different.

Aziraphale still didn't believe what happened.

"Something's different," Crowley finally announced.

They stayed standing close, neither of them daring to move.

"Yes, I believe so," Aziraphale agreed.

Another silence filled the gap between words.

Aziraphale's arms tightened around Crowley's waist.

Crowley let his arms slide lazily around Aziraphale's hips.

They paused.

"Am I..." Crowley started, then stopped because he didn't really want the answer, not entirely. At least, he didn't think he wanted it.

Aziraphale stuttered to fill in the blanks. "I think..."

"That's..."

"New?"

"You think Adam..."

"No, couldn't be."

"Right."

The silence embraced them. They embraced each other. Everything seemed right in the world, perhaps more so now than before.

"Supposing they cant send me down there anymore," Crowley mused.

"No, I suppose not."

"So your people..."

Aziraphale cleared his throat. "I believe they're our people now...."

"Right."

"Yes."

"A bit odd, that."

Another long pause. Crowley twitched his new wings. Aziraphale licked his lips.

"Took your time, now, didn't you?" Crowley asked.

"I was considerably tied up," Aziraphale answered.

"Oh? Your people?"

"Er. Our people..."

"Tied up for seven-hundred years?"

"It took a while to convince the Metatron I was needed on... Er... Earth."

"All the way up, was it?"

"Yes, it was."

Crowley's lips turned in a smile for the first time in seven-hundred years.


End file.
